Labour front bench’s clothing addiction continues to unravel
Keir Starmer has been exposed, along with his wife, accepting tens of thousands of pounds in designer clothes from a hugely wealthy donor and, after initial attempts by his stooges to explain away the donor-funded splurges as just part of the job or even to claim they did it to avoid the taxpayer having to fund it, has said he has ‘reconsidered’ and won’t do it again. ‘Big wow’, as you might say.
But now Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been found out accepting £7,500 in donations for clothing – but registering it only as office “support”. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has also been cashing in – she accepted clothes worth more than £3,500 and declared them as a “donation in kind for undertaking parliamentary duties”.
Rayner also accepted £8,500 in October, £8,250 in March and £900 in April from Lord Alli, the same donor who funded the Starmers’ personal shopper and clothing spree. Rayner declared these funds as “support” for her “capacity as deputy leader of the Labour Party”. It is unclear whether these were also spent on designer rags.
Meanwhile, millions in this country are living in poverty, 1.5 million children are in poverty and going hungry and ten million pensioners are facing the prospect of freezing this winter after Reeves’s Winter Fuel Allowance cut, with Labour expecting at least four thousand to freeze to death, decisions she described as the best period of her political career.
Austerity under the blue-version Tories is linked to at least 300,000 unnecessary deaths and the red-version Tories’ are trying to hide the true figure while concocting their own version of ‘social murder‘.
‘Let them wear Prada’, perhaps?
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In today’s Guardian, Rayner reportedly predicts that “people will begin to feel a difference within five years.”
Is that all?
Yes, but much quicker if you are a pensioner, of course!
That’s if there are any real people still around.
These parasites are killing the host.
Feel a difference?
With these self-serving cretins continuing toerag austerity, the ONLY difference I’ll feel will be that I’ll be older – if I’m still alive.
From David Goff at Yorkshire Bylines:
Should we beware of millionaire mass migration?
Forget a wealth tax, it’s the wealth rebate we should be worried about.
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/politics/should-we-beware-of-millionaire-mass-migration/
Radio 4’s “More or Less” covered this story on Wednesday and found that the research on millionaires was not based on a representative sample. First item in the programme here:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002304z
Had a great day at the Liverpool March for Peace in Palestine today though train to get there from big cities only had 5 carriages and some stood up all the way, privatisation eh!
Also not good to see a very large queue of women for toilet in station- for a city the size of Liverpool you need more loos in the station etc!
But the March was brilliant with many thousands of diverse citizens with great chants to put Right Wing Labour to shame and I was moved to tears by a group of women carrying a white stretcher and dropping red petals from it.
I marched near Unite Community Manchester, Chesterfield, Lancaster & Leeds & their Unite red Flags.
Thanks Liverpool for a great day fighting for the oppressed in Palestine.
Re : Rayner : “It is unclear whether these were also spent on designer rags.”
If memory serves, I read the other day that ‘she stayed at Lord Alli’s New York accommodation for eight days’ which is presumably at least part of what she declared…
I can’t say I am particularly disappointed by Starmer and his ‘government’ as I had no expectations whatsoever. However, I did admire Rayner very much back in the day but once she threw her lot behind Starmer she has indeed been a huge disappointment to me. Completely betrayed her roots.
Apparently the estimated costs of staying in an exclusive penthouse apartment in New York, overlooking Manhattan and the Empire State Building with gym, jacuzzi, sauna, swimming pool and roof-top terrace, was the same or less than we see for a tiny glamping pod in a field on Four-in-a-Bed on TV. It is even unclear whether flights (business class?) are included! How fortunate that de luxe apartments in New York are so cheap, who knew?
It wasn’t a jacuzzi till they got in. Champers and caviar dontcha know.
Julia, maybe she hasn’t.
According to Rayner in the Guardian she asks whether she’s allowed a holiday. Well, yes love, as long as you pay for it yourself, as you expected Johnson to, and hopefully behave like a 44 year old grandmother and deputy prime minister, not an 18 year old between leaving school and starting work/college/university…
As Leader of the Opposition, apparently Starmer “needed” protection at football matches and hence a rich donor to pay for his corporate facilities which always includes food and drink for everyone in the party, including the security heavies. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was able to sit in the stands at Southampton in perfect safety, as had Jeremy Corbyn at Arsenal …..
Now, how fortunate that the “Labour Party” conference is in Liverpool, a stone’s throw from where Arsenal happen to be playing tomorrow, a day when the Leader of the “Labour Party” would be doing the media round and speaking at the conference. But not this year? Surely our dear leader hasn’t prioritised the footie, again, like he did when he happened to visit Dublin on the very day England were playing there?
Which comes first – the country, or football. I don’t think we need ask….
Rachel Jane Reeves loves Nancy Astor, an admirer of Adolph Hitler and massive and unrepentant antisemite.
Her £7,500 worth of “free” clothes, her expenses record and her part in Donations controversies generally sink into insignificance against that.
Just wait till Labour backroom heavies start getting a thing for Hugo Boss leather longcoats!
To me declaring clothes as admin/office expenses is simple and plainly fraud. There is some sign of them knowing that to claim for clothes might really be dodgy. If it were acceptable then why declare it wrongfully. In my view the lie was premeditated.
Well there’s knickers and there’s nickers.
What parliamentary duties involce donations. Stinks of a bribe to me.
Involve sorry
Knickergate . . . . . Hasn’t it been a fun day !! ?
And – This is before we get on to the matter of the expenses for “fact-finding trips” to Israel for Labour Friends of Israel.
Hasn’t it been a fun day ! ?
Here’s a little poem Wot I wrote, its called
‘ON £160K AND AS TIGHT AS A DUCK’S ARSE!’
‘Posh Frock Mrs Kear sat with the Posh Frock ‘Marie Antoinette’ who’s known as Reeves
And oh how they larfed at pensioners freezing.
As Mr S stroked his luxurious thousand pound fancy suit sleeves.
There’s gonna be a Conference collection.
So Labour’s ‘Great & Good’ (they’re deluded) can doll up for a local bop.
And the ‘mugs’ who make up members have bought them a voucher.
For every Liverpool charity shop.’
(Because of Right Wing Labour’s sabotage against Corbyn they have caused millions of diverse working class people to suffer).
Give to every Liverpool Charity Shop & Food Bank & everywhere but Dump Grotesque Right Wing Labour in the dustbin of history!
In terms of the progress of humanity Right Wing Labour might well have never existed.
We need a new Left Wing Democratic Socialist Party to emerge soon, not in 4 years time as next time Tories/Farer Right will not split the reactionary vote.
This ‘The Collective’ sounds interesting.
Solidarity.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
It’s gonna pop before five years has passed
Let’s not forget that silence from across the uniparty, as well as clothing and jolly’s, is bought and paid for by fascists:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/labours-new-bankroller-israel-lobbyist-south-african-apartheid-profiteer